Bill's Birthday Festival

We decided to celebrate Bill's birthday a few days early and it has been a three day celebration festival.  We hadn't seen our friend, Cindy, and her husband, Jim, since Halloween so we went out to dinner to Tommy O's with them Friday night.  It was good catching up with her.  Unfortunately, her eyesight has deteriorated even more than it had been and has been causing her to feel ill with headaches and dizziness.  So she has been on leave of absence from her job and has finally made the decision that she needed to resign.  I feel so badly for her.  She was out of work for so long because of her blindness and was finally able to get into a position that she was able to work but she was only able to do it for about a year.  Hopefully she will start feeling better soon and will be able to figure out a new avenue to work so that she feels fulfilled and that she is making her contribution to her family.

Bill took a storyboarding class at the Northwest Film Center in Portland yesterday.  He has taken screenwriting courses and lighting courses there before.  His dream is to make a movie some day and in the meantime, he is using the classes to improve his various video projects that he does for Rotary.  He seemed to really enjoy the class.

His birthday dinner request was a T-bone steak and key lime pie.  He is in a weight loss challenge at the moment so he has been really trying to lose weight in the hopes that he can win the challenge.  So I told Beverly to ask for the smallest T-bone that Butcher Boys had.  I swear that is was at least a 12 oz steak the way it was--and it was the smallest one that they had.  So he got his red meat fix that will hopefully last him awhile.  And he got his favorite dessert of key lime pie and will be able to get another piece tonight for dinner.

Since he had such a big steak, he decided he had better take a long hike today before he went to his weigh in tonight.  So he drove out to the gorge to hike at Hamilton Mountain.  Then dinner at Beverly's again tonight--pasta primavera--another one of his favorites.

So all in all, I think he has had a very nice birthday festival.  Happy Birthday Honey!